Developing an effective brand strategy beyond advertising and a splashy new design | Josh Grau (Yext, Wealthfront, Twitter)

Josh has been a leader at some of the biggest brands in technology like Twitter, YouTube, Wealthfront and was most recently the CMO of Yext. He moonlights in education, having taught at Stanford's graduate school of business and is a long-time faculty member of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. He is also one of the creators of the Brand Marketing program at Reforge.

Josh and I talked about Brand and what that means in the context of Marketing. Josh talks about how he differentiates the Brand Strategy from Brand Advertising and Brand Expression and why that’s important. I enjoyed this conversation because Josh provided some context into how to think about Brand as not just as a function of advertising, but as an approach to ensuring consistency across all touchpoints including product, customer service and marketing.

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Where to find Josh:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshgrau/

https://twitter.com/grauface

joshgrau.com

Where to find Patrick: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/

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Sources we talk about: 

https://www.reforge.com/previews/growth/brand-strategy-development

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(3:00) Why Josh hates the question around whether he’s a brand based or a performance based marketing leader

(6:17) Requiring a holistic approach to marketing to ensure a consistency

(7:51) Brand isn’t just top of funnel advertising and the reductive nature of that definition

(10:14) A holistic perspective on total experience

(11:10) The components of a brand strategy and going beyond just its expressive nature

(15:19) The brand architecture and how it supports retained and engaged customers

(18:03) Aligning the company objectives, the vision, and how to bring the brand to life for the customer

(21:17) The longer and shorter term variables that adjust to the changing needs of the customers

(23:18) Consistency across all touch points including product and customer service

(26:29) How to start, where to look, and running a listening tour internally and externally

(30:08) Governance across multiple teams and ensuring the brand strategy doesn’t get shelved

(34:44) Brand expressions and how this informs product marketing and growth marketing

(36:10) How to think about measuring the brand strategy

(38:38) How to find Josh!